faith
by dress without sleeves
Summary: Faith can make anything real. Yuna's search for Tidus, from her eyes.


**Author's Notes:** I'm nervous about posting in Final Fantasy, as I've been told the writers and reviewers are very demanding.

I hope this makes the cut!

faith

_Just cuuuz._

Tomorrow, Yuna will be an orphan.

Her father stands in the doorway, looking down at her with his dark, sad eyes, gripping his staff for balance and swaying weakly on his feet. His eyes are wrinkled and mouth turned naturally down; there is nervous energy buzzing through his body, fingers jumping against the doorframe and mouth twitching at the corners.

"This isn't goodbye, Yuna-my-Yuna," he murmurs, dropping to his knees and opening his arms for her. She steps into them quietly, digging her little fingers into his back, curling them inside of his shirt. He smells like wine and sandwiches, just like usual, and his unshaven cheek is course and rough against her head.

She isn't sure if she will ever be able to let him go. Not knowing that he won't come back.

"This isn't goodbye," he says again, his big giant hand rubbing circles on her back. "We can always meet in dreams."

"But you won't be _real_," she wails, clinging tighter to him, wanting to climb inside and never ever ever climb out.

He sits back, taking her face between his palms. "No, no, Yuna-my-Yuna," he whispers fiercely, bringing their noses close enough to touch the tips together. "We are Summoners! Faith can make anything real."

But what she hears is, _Faythe_.

X

Ten years later, she is clinging to Tidus, wanting to climb inside and never ever ever climb out. But with each passing second she can feel him fading from her arms, falling into nothing before her very eyes. She doesn't know how much of him is solid anymore and how much is just the memory of his skin under hers; Yuna closes her eyes because she cannot bear to see him slip back into the Faythe without her.

She can't even say _I love you_ around the lump in her throat, can't ask him if it hurts or if he's sorry. "Dreams," she chokes out, like this should mean something. An instruction, perhaps.

"Have faith," he whispers against her ear, and his voice is barely more than a shudder in the wind. "Faith can make anything real."

But what she thinks is, _I can make you real._

X

She's not sure when she started wearing the shorts; somewhere between Tidus falling apart beneath her hands and the bite of loneliness on her neck she shed her long skirt and modest top for more practical outerwear.

She doesn't have Tidus to kick ass for her anymore. She's got to do it for herself.

On long nights she stares up at the moon and fights sleep; she doesn't want to meet him in a dream, where touch is nothing more than a whisper of a memory, where his voice has a ghostly echo and his lips taste like sand.

There is a way, there _must_ be a way. She is a summoner and the Faythe can make anything real; her father didn't come back because she didn't try hard enough; she wasn't strong enough or skilled enough but it's all _different_ now. She's defeated Sin, she's practiced, and she is perfect.

She can bring him back. She _will_ bring him back. He is hers, her dream and her creation, given to her by the Faythe and stolen just as quickly. But Yuna learned nothing from Tidus if not that there is always—_always_—a way.

The moon rises. Yuna gives in to sleep.

X

Yuna doesn't tell anybody that she speaks to the sphere. She knows by now that it's not Tidus; knows that it is nothing more than the faintest trace of a boy that only looks like him.

But sometimes she can pretend, and sometimes that is enough.

_Faythe can make anything real._

X

"Do you want to see him again?"

She nods, but only because she cannot speak around the frog hopping around in her throat. And just like that, as if she hasn't spilled time and blood and tears over this search for him, as if she hadn't laid awake for years wondering if Lenne and Shuyin's fate would be her own, she is on a ship speeding toward him.

Rikku squeezes her hand, jumping up and down and nudging Paine into a smile. "We're gonna see Tidus!" She squeals gleefully, dancing a circle around Yuna and smiling broadly. "Super_iffic_!"

Yuna doesn't know how long it takes until they land; her mind is hazy and her thoughts jumbled. But soon—soon enough and lifetimes too late—they land.

And there he is.

There he is, standing like she saw him yesterday, standing him like she had managed to say _I love you_, standing like he hadn't dissolved in her arms.

She is running, running running running and crashing into him, wrapping around him, trying to pull him inside of her and never ever ever letting him climb out.

"I love you," she says now, freely, joyously, as loudly as she can. "I love you!"

He laughs, hugging her against his chest. "Faith can make anything real," he whispers before kissing her, firmly and happily, his lips warm and wet and familiar.

They taste of seawater.

"Yes," she says, leaning her forehead on her chest and his callused fingers in hers, "Faith can."


End file.
